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Harriet Harman In Trouble !

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mikey4444 | 08:01 Tue 25th Feb 2014 | News
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26333558

The DM may be up to its old smear tricks here but why on earth didn't Harman just admit that the PIE shouldn't have been allowed to be an associate member of the NCCL ? She was given plenty of opportunity on Newsnight but failed to do so. Even the DM is not trying to say that she is a fan of paedophilia but a simple apology would stop the DM's smear campaign dead in its tracks. I am afraid she has shot herself in the foot here.

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I thought it a train wreck of an interview on Harriet Harmans part, watching Newsnight last night. I do not think for a moment that HH, Jack Dromey etc were actively involved in promoting PIE or PIEs agenda, and I do think the DM have a political agenda in this. That having been said, Harriet Harman was asked,point blank, about 5 times by the interviewer if she...
08:58 Tue 25th Feb 2014
from that link.

Miss Hewitt was general secretary of the NCCL from 1974-83. Miss Harman was a newly-qualified solicitor when she became the NCCL’s legal officer in 1978 until 1982, when she entered Parliament. Mr Dromey sat on the NCCL executive committee for almost a decade, from 1970 to 1979.

The extraordinary links between PIE and the NCCL emerge in archives of internal NCCL documents held at the University of Hull and the London School of Economics. PIE’s campaigning in the 1970s caused public outrage.

The group’s members did not present themselves as child abusers but as ‘child lovers’ keen to ‘liberate’ children from sexual ‘repression’.
Were they more innocent days? Perhaps the NCCL didn't quite understand what the aims of PIE were.
Harperson is doing the typical politican, attack. But it just does not work. Paddy Ashdown had the right idea about his affair - so what? or something similar I believe he said. got a good ribbing for Paddy pantsdown but it was turned to a joke.

All she had to do was say how disgusted she was and that she would not have been involved had she known (provided she didnt know - which I doubt she did). A personal apology no, but she could have given one on behalf of the organization that let them affiliate and killed the story. Now it will go on and on.

It wont affect labour at the next election, all politicians have some skeletons and I bet there are a fair few breathing a sigh of relief she is in the limelight not then. But there will be plenty of other scandals before the next election.
sandyr, any organisation that says and is open about it, that babies of 4 months can be sexual, and that the age of consent should be 4 ought not to have got off the ground, it did and with the knowledge of the NCCL.
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Sandy...out of all the reasons why the PIE was admitted as associate Members of the NCCL, the idea that they didn't understand what their aims were is highly unlikely surely ?
we know from cases of recent days that the so called great and the good can be paedophiles, and that who many who were aware of those activities turned a blind eye to it, it wasn't acceptable then, nor is it now. If the links between them are found then the full force of the law should come crashing down on their heads.
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Latest from the BBC News website ::::

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26333558
there can be no excuse for not knowing, they were affiliated, how did PIE get it's funding.
I doubt that PIE told the entire truth about their interests when they applied for associate membership. What checks were made on groups looking to become associates.
I thought it a train wreck of an interview on Harriet Harmans part, watching Newsnight last night.

I do not think for a moment that HH, Jack Dromey etc were actively involved in promoting PIE or PIEs agenda, and I do think the DM have a political agenda in this.

That having been said, Harriet Harman was asked,point blank, about 5 times by the interviewer if she was, with hindsight sorry about the affiliation between the NCCL as it then was and PIE. Instead of just offering an apology, she avoided it, preferring instead to offer some comment about how PIE had no input into NCCL policy, or that it was just 1 of 1000 organisations paying a sub to be a member of the NCCL, and it just sounded weak and evasive.

I suspect she was keen not to apologise because that might give substance to the notion of a link between NCCL and PIE, but if Shami Chakrabarti the current director of Liberty, the organisation that the NCCL became can apologise for the link between NCCL and PIE during a period of time when she would still have been a child, then surely Harmon could have done the same thing too.

Other questions remain though, germane to the discussion. How was it that an organisation actively promoting paedophilia and lobbying for changes in legal status and how paedophilia was viewed by the public was allowed to exist for a decade or so as an entirely legal organisation? It even appears that they might have been the recipients of government grant money.

Not a good or comfortable interview for Harriet Harmon.
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Sandy...isn't there a clue in the name...Paedophile Information Exchange ?

Its a bit of a giveaway I would have thought !
So, on today's News, Harriet Harman has called the Mail hypocrites, because they are always printing titilating pictures of under age girls in bikinis, with pervy comments about their long legs and toned figures.

Which is true, because the Mail does that a lot.

But is it prudent for a politician to pick a fight with a national newspaper, with a vindictive editor?
the NCCL did know about them, and did indeed have links, how can these people defend their actions is beyond me
she has made a huge mistake, The Sun newspaper has printed a photo of topless girls for years, has she ever made a fuss about that, whilst i don't care for the Mail's sometime double standards, Ms Harman has gone from the frying pan into the fire,
and though i am not 100 percent sure, but think it was the Independent who also ran the story.
@Sandy You could indeed be right, PIE may not have told the full truth to the NCCL, and there is no doubt that they were piggy-backing onto the movements supporting various sexual freedoms. The 70s were febrile times in that regard. But the clue, surely, is in the title - its not as if they were hiding their agenda, it was right there in the name of the organisation. Someone within the NCCL should have just rejected their application.

As it is, if you reject the notion that Harmon, Dromey or Hewitt were actively involved in promoting PIEs agenda, instead they just look either weak or mercenary, continuing to take PIEs money in subscription fees.
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I agree with LG. If Shami Chakrabarti, the leader of LIBERTY can apologise, I am at a loss to understand why Harman didn't do the same on Newsnight.
An extraordinarily cack-handed performance from her.
actually it wouldn't have stopped the Mail or any other paper, the matter is now with the police, and it does seem going on that last link of mine that
Savile was a fully paid up member of PIE
I think since I had just graduated in the seventies that the NCCL had allowed PIE to associate on Voltaire's grounds

I disagree with what you say but will etc etc

they were after all campaigning for a reduction in the age of consent....

Harriet Harman's interview was not so much of a slow motion train crash as her telling it like it is to people who were nt there and had no historical interest....
also HH knows what she said at the time and we dont - and there is a possibility that there is more to the story...

NCCL's reputation was not as shambolic as she said it was
Does anyone remember un-jobs ? un-jobs at the NCCL were sought after and she got one .....

Remember HH as solicitor general was ripped off by a high court judge for passing on court documents...child protection and she said it was in the childs interest but Hid Lordship got really sniffy about contempt of court.
She stood her ground and said she was right - so did he

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